RIM deny Indian BlackBerry monitoring claims

RIM has denied reports that it has opened backdoor access to the Indian government in its BlackBerry email system, describing the claims as "false and technologically infeasible." Indian paper The Economic Times had suggested that RIM would install a network data analysis system (NDAS) rendering every email and message readable by government security forces; "intercepted and decoded data will travel between service providers and RIM India" a home ministry note issued by deputy director Arvind Kumar suggested.

That's certainly not the case, a RIM spokesperson told the Guardian, insisting that "there will be no change to the security model of BlackBerry Enterprise Service." Instead, the company would follow "lawful access" processes when requests for user information were legal, made no greater demands for BlackBerry services than those of others, that Enterprise customers' security would not be impacted, and that individual customers would not be made "specific deals."

Those "specific deals" are just what the Indian government has been demanding over the past months, threatening to pull the plug on India's roughly 400,000 BlackBerry users if RIM didn't open access to private information. The government's security agencies had suggested that terrorists and other malcontents could use the encrypted communication technologies to plan attacks and uprisings.